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It ought to be clear to everyone that Russia is the West’s permanent whipping boy.

After Aleppo was liberated by a joint Russian-Syrian-Iranian effort, right away, the Western msm spun this victory into an evil deed, reminding the world that there was collateral damage, as if we never have any of that in our wars. Trump – the msm slayer – jumped on the msm’s bandwagon and said that what the Russians did in Aleppo was “bad, very very bad.” Have you noticed that when Trump makes pronouncements, he rarely bothers to explain? Yet the killing of civilians in Mosul, where the “good war” was being fought by the US and Iraq, while condemned even by Amnesty International, was largely given a pass by the press that Trump claims to oppose. I am not saying Americans should stop supporting Trump. What I am saying is that at this crucial juncture, which I have previously called a rah rah moment, warning that such moments are the most dangerous of all in our history, Trump needs watchdogs to keep him straight, not cheerleaders to encourage him to keep flip-flopping and being wishy-washy.

After all, when the public absolutely demands something, the msm find it impossible to oppose them for very long. You must demand an end to the provocation of Russia and its allies, and if moral and practical arguments have not persuaded you, then have a look at some military reasons shown below.

We now know that the allegations of a Russian hacking were false. Anyone paying attention knew that the leaks had to have come from the inside. In fact, Craig Murray, a close associate of Julian Assange, said he was involved in passing along this info trove to someone else and that it came from a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter. Oh, no, said 17 intel agencies in unison, only Russia had the motive to disclose damning evidence about Hillary to the public. After all, why would a Bernie Sanders supporter be disgruntled about Hillary’s winning the primary thanks to dirty tricks played on Bernie by her campaign?

Anyone with a brain cell knew the Shadow Government was lying as usual. After all, CIA assets are trained in lying. They’re experts.

But this week the world learned that the CIA has software designed to make it look like the Russians are hacking us.

Oh but, said 17 intel agencies, trained to lie, we never used this software, just had it lying around for amusement. Trust us.

I say all this to remind you that the US Deep State/Shadow Government will never be persuaded by reason or diplomacy to tell the truth or stop destroying peaceful and stable countries with their color revolutions and their indiscriminate bombing raids.

Which is why I have decided to translate a long article detailing most of the innovations in Russian military hardware. The first installment appears below, along with other supporting information. For the same reason, I had previously posted my translation from Chinese of the Dongfeng missile, capable of wiping out the entire US instantaneously. But that was in 2013. There is a new and better Dongfeng now. What’s the next step up from instantaneously?

Clearly, neither the Pentagon nor the State Department will ever stop creating chaos and destabilizing perfectly functional countries until they are stopped. I am not suggesting that Washington needs to be nuked to stop the Neocons/Neoliberals in their tracks. What I am saying is that they must probably be convinced with incontrovertible proof that they cannot defeat Russia. To do so would mean defeating China and Iran as well, and within a few short years, the rest of the world could become sick and tired of the US-generated mischief as well, and might very well abandon us. Already, Asian, Middle Eastern, African and South American countries are buying up military hardware made in Russia or China. Europe is interested in their hardware as well and is waiting for the sanctions to be lifted. And of course, the US has been buying rocket engines from Russia to launch its satellites.

I have been trying for years to persuade the public, from a moral and practical standpoint, to support politicians who stand for a more-rational foreign policy. There are precious few, but Hawaiian congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is a commendable stand-out. Now to complement this, I hope to be able to post regular reports aimed at showing why our constant provocation of Russia, and also Russian allies China and Iran, is a bad idea from a military standpoint.

Much or all of the translation below is from an into-Russian translation of an article appearing in Swedish in a Swedish journal, which is, unfortunately, available by subscription only.

A new Putin tool: “Satan-2” can cover a territory the size of France

03/02/20173718129

Olle Ohlsén Pettersson

In recent years, Russia has invested heavily in modernizing its armed forces. In addition to the innovative missile system, it includes new nuclear submarines and one advanced air defense system.

On Wednesday, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu presented in the State Duma new plans for their development. Here are some types of weapons that affect the balance of the world – and in the Baltics.

RS-28 “Sarmat”: “Satan-2”

The RS-28 Sarmat is an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. It can cover an area comparable in size to Texas or France. The missile has a range of 11 thousand km, and weighs 100 tons. It was developed to replace the older R-36M Voevoda, known as the “Satan”. [This is the name assigned by NATO, not Russia—Don]

End of translation

Comparison of US-Russian arms

by Don Hank

The problem with US armaments is cost. The armed forces do not buy efficiently and are sitting ducks for cost overruns and boondoggles, thanks to lobbying and politics in general, problems that Russia has got under control for the most part. Take the F-35. So far it has cost $400 billion to develop. Yet it is at a disadvantage over, say, the Russian S-35 in several ways, including speed, a key factor in dog fights, altitude and number of missiles carried.

“America’s F-35 stealth fighter platform, which was just formally introduced in 2015 with the F-35B, carries a price of around $100 million per unit, and its stated specs are largely inferior to those Russia claims of the T-50. The plane is expected to enter full production next year, and Russia has already committed to buying ‘at least one squadron of the planes from the first batch’.” [a squadron is anywhere from 12 to 24 aircraft—Don]

The cost of the Russian S-35 is only $65 million, lots cheaper. However, the F-34 is superior in bvr (beyond visible range) combat, thanks to its superior stealth.

The other match receiving world attention is between the ultimate stealth fighters, the US F-22 Raptor and the Russian Sukhoi PAK FAT-50, both superb fighters rather evenly matched all in all.

However, the Raptor costs $350 million per unit and has suffered enormous birth pangs, as described by the NY Post, while the PAK FAT-50 reportedly “costs a fraction of the Raptor.

Interview between Assad and Chinese reporter. Compare this intelligent interview on foreign and military affairs with any interview with any Western official or politicians on such a topic. And compare the articulate and thoughtful Assad with the religious fanatic thug in Riyadh.

But note Assad’s view of Erdogan vs that of Putin. And yet the Syrian president gets along with Putin. This is the essence of diplomacy, which almost the entire West has lost.

Foreword: My friends occasionally warn me about appearing to be too friendly toward Russia, as if such were possible.

So why do I focus so much on Russia? Five reasons come to mind:

1-I have studied Russian language and literature for most of my adult life, on both the undergraduate and graduate levels. During my studies, I came to love and admire the Russians based on what I have learned about them. They are for the most part courageous, intelligent, sensitive, honest, persevering and long suffering, to mention but a few of their merits.

2-In recent years, I have watched the Western world deteriorate to a situation that by now seems beyond repair. There is hatred between left and right, between the races, between Mexicans and US citizens, between Muslims and Christians, and there is a press and political class that encourage this, and that foments hatred of the more mild-mannered Muslims while embracing the more intolerant and violent ones, as I showed here. The press and politicians constantly stir up wars that we inevitably lose or that destroy whole nations and regions, and the elites are at a loss to articulate why (although it ought to be obvious why they do this, as I explained here). There is no change in sight. In comparison to Russia, the latter seems like a paradise, even to the most objective observer.

3-To keep up with the language, I read almost all the speeches and interviews delivered by Putin in the original Russian. I also have read his biography in his native tongue. It is no exaggeration to say I feel as if I had known him all my life and I know how he will react in each situation. In diplomacy, he seems to be heeding the words of Christ.

4-The most formidable danger facing the world is nuclear war and the media and political class seem hell-bent on starting a war with Russia. From what I have read, partly in the Russian press, I am convinced that either of China or Russia could destroy the entire US in a matter of minutes with their hardware (which is why I posted this).

5-Of all the issues that the msm and politicians lie about and distort, all things touching Russia are by far the most distorted and misunderstood. I would be a bad person if I snoozed through this barrage of lies and false narratives, and, given all the research I have done and my educational background, I simply can’t do that.

After all, why would someone with years of research under his belt in precisely this life or death issue not want to counter the obvious lies about Russia? Should I care that some racist Westerners will think ill of me and call me a pinko or a commie – even though the West is adopting the model of the USSR while Russia has learned its lesson about tyranny the hard way and has backtracked to a conservative, sane and healthy way of life and public policies?

I had told you this before, based solely on an analysis of the inane accusations by the “intelligence” agencies, here and here.

The breaking news about the CIA is that Wikileaks has received a data trove proving they have been using Russian software and malware to create fake “evidence” that the Russians are hacking US officials.

“The release of the CIA’s hacking tools is a victory not for the American public but for Russia.”

In other words, in Slate’s view, making the public aware of the truth is not a victory for the people? So is it a victory for them to be uninformed? I guess so. Moreover, calling it exclusively a victory for Russia implies we have lost something. So clearing the path to a detente with Russia, a nuclear power, is a bad thing – no matter that it might be a step to avoiding a nuclear holocaust?

Wired goes even further, saying that even though the CIA had tools to fake Russian hacking, there is no indication that they used them.
Right. So if a man with a stocking over his head is carrying a bag of burglar tools and is standing outside a freshly-broken window of your home, don’t jump to conclusions and call the police or anything.

But ok, let’s suspend disbelief and say it does not prove the Russians did not hack US officials. But Wired and the rest of the CIA hit men journos omit to tell us what it does prove: That all the hard “evidence” of Russian hacking is now null and void, because the only “evidence” was Russian characters in docs supposedly left by the “hackers” but now we know that this is not proof it was the Russians and not the CIA itself, which previously had given non-credible evidence, such as the scope of the data dump and the “motive” – as if Bernie Sanders supporters had no motive whatsoever to leak this information to the public. If the CIA has no evidence, how is this undocumented theory of a Russian hack a print-worthy story?

The CIA’s claim that they found Russian “fingerprints” all over the files that were left by the hackers, including characters from a Russian keyboard, was a stupid thing to say because the Russians are a lot smarter than to leave that kind of trail. And the Russians don’t lie to the press in ways that can easily be detected. (If you compare the Russian press with the Western press, you will see that the latter often prints things that are later disproven and presents viewpoints not supported by the facts, as evidenced by the Russian hacking narrative). If you follow the Russian press, eg, Sputnik, Russia Today, TASS, Ria Novosti, etc, you therefore do not see obvious exaggeration and lies. Ask yourself: Why would a country with almost no public debt need to lie about its economy, for example, to a country with a $20 trillion debt? Why would it need to lie about its foreign relations when it does not start color revolutions and create chaos throughout the world? Why would it lie about its treatment of its citizens when no scandal has ever broken over spying on its own people, or when no riots occur in its cities or when its president has as high as 85% approval in the polls (which never happened in the US, ever!)? Etc. Observant students of Russia and Putin and their modus operandi know the Russians did not hack our officials. So when Putin said several months back that the Russian Federation does not interfere in elections of other countries, he was telling the truth. How did I know? Because, as I explained in my articles Putinology 101 and The Putin Principle, Russia has long stated as part of its public policy statement and publicity program that, unlike the West, they do not meddle in other countries’ internal affairs, for example, as the US did at the Maidan in Kiev, causing a bloody illegal coup that led to an ongoing civil war and wrecked the country socially and economically. Meddling is exclusively Western MO. Russia must avoid all appearances of meddling, especially in US internal politics, because non-interference is what they have been trying to promote throughout the world, creating a stark contrast to the US and showing the public that their hands-off policy really works by establishing trust and respect in foreign relations. So far this policy has led to excellent relations with even the most difficult states, including NATO member Turkey, which, despite the Turkish shootdown of the Russian fighter over Syria, now has better relations with Russia than with any Western country (Holland just recently refused to let Erdogan’s plane land at a Dutch airport; Merkel refuses to let Erdogan campaign among Turkish residents of Germany). The iron-clad Russian non-interference principle is why Putin was very circumspect in his description of Trump, calling him yarki, which when applied to persons, only means roughly “colorful,” not “bright” as it was wrongly translated in the Western media (BTW, I am a technical translator by trade and Russian is one of my languages). Trump foolishly said Putin had called him a genius. Hardly! Trump’s over-the-top claims have contributed to this own downfall by creating the illusion that Putin supported his campaign, even though Putin repeatedly said he did not support either candidate and will work with either one that is elected.

Russia has in Vladimir Putin one of the most gifted diplomats and statesmen who ever lived. The US is at best in the hands of bungling amateurs. And that is putting it diplomatically. After all, I would not want a Russophobic Neocon saying I am a Kremlin stooge.

Some observers of current events are repeating the centuries-old notion that religion causes wars, and there is plenty of evidence in European history to support this notion. The rejection of religion as a philosophical trend flourished in the Age of Enlightenment and it was the excesses of the Catholics and also many of their opponents, the early Protestant sects, that fed into this. The novel Candide by Voltaire is a catalogue of such excesses. However, Voltaire’s ideas represent only the more radical branch of the Enlightenment, which bitterly opposes Christianity, while the writings of, say, Pascal and Locke, plead for a more enlightened Christianity rather than the abolition of the religion altogether. The current blatant Russophobia and pro-Saudi (ie, anti-Assad, anti-Shiite – eg, anti-Iran and pro-terrorist) policies of the US are an extension of this radical form of the Enlightenment, which promotes radical Islam for only one reason and that is, to oppose Christianity – ie, the same reason they promote LGBT. Otherwise you could not explain why they support two phenomena with such diametrically opposite and mutually antagonistic effects.

Thus, the age of the “enlightenment” is still ongoing and the radical form of it is overpowering the West with almost no one realizing this on either side of the aisle. Some people blame this evil on the Jews, but in fact, the Jews cannot be expected to support Christianity wholeheartedly. If US so-called Christians were smarter, neither the Jews nor any other minority could put a dent in our general American culture, just as they cannot harm Russia, where Christians have generally been kind to Jews but refuse to be manipulated – and this is easier for the Russians because the Russians defeated fascism and Soviet propaganda and literature focused on the harmony between Jews and Russians (which is not to say that Jews were always treated kindly by Russian groups). For example, the Soviet novel The Sword and Shield by Vadim Kozhevnikov, which Russian President Vladimir Putin claims influenced his decision to join the KGB, poignantly contrasts the Third Reich’s abuse of the Jews with the Soviets’ respectful treatment of them (while this novel is available on line free of charge in Russian, no unexpurgated English-language editions are available in the US, where every effort is made by the Deep State to keep the kinder aspects of Soviet Russia away from curious eyes). An example of Putin’s kind but firm attitude toward Russian Jews was on display when he visited the Schneerson Library in Moscow. He mentioned to them that the library was nationalized during the first government of the Soviet Union, which he said was made up of at least 80% Jews It was a reminder that the Russians are tolerant of other religions, but also a subtle hint that nothing like this takeover of a Christian country by a radical minority hostile to Russian Orthodoxy would be allowed to happen again. This stands in stark contrast to the disproportionate power that AIPAC wields in the US government, where it has been challenged since the 70s by different administrations to declare itself a foreign agent but has always won court cases, despite the blatant illegality of this situation.

Meanwhile, the American government supports fascist Ukraine today, for example, and EU states put Jews in harm’s way by indiscriminate immigration policies toward refugees from terror-exporting states. Consequently, very few Jews still live in Europe today. Thus the West implements a hypocritical policy toward its Jews that makes no sense to many Americans.

Putin represents the milder and more reasonable version of both the Enlightenment and Christianity and he therefore represents the only world power that effectively offsets terrorism while also respecting its Muslim and Jewish populations. He has the only formula that can succeed.

The West is failing with its defense of the radical form of the Enlightenment ideas that led to the bloody French revolution, Bonaparte’s catastrophic romp thru Europe and Russia, and Stalin’s and Mao’s murderous excesses. The creation of ISIS by the US-Israeli-Saudi axis can trace its lineage back to these same old radical ideas. If the West ever grows a brain it will begin to study and implement Putin’s policies. I would urge universities to offer a course in Putinology, as suggested here.

Fellow Americans, you are financing Nazi sympathizing killers in Ukraine!

By Don Hank

Yesterday I shared with my internet group my research (since posted) on the Donbass-Lugansk (Novorossia) seizure of Ukrainian oligarchs’ production facilities in E. Ukraine in response to a Kiev-led blockade that is both illegal and a blatant violation of the Minsk accords. Naturally, the bottom feeding elites in Europe and the US keep blaming Russia even though Kiev has been shelling civilians in E. Ukraine for years! BUT Russia is not a signatory to the Minsk accords and has no responsibility here. Secondly, the OSCE, responsible for monitoring the situation in that region, has never had the guts to act on its own information and hold the West to account. They know that Kiev (Poroshenko’s government, now collapsing) is responsible for the murder of civilians because they live in that area, and if you read even their reports, it is obvious who is violating the accords daily and has been since the beginning. Consequently, due to their irresponsible inaction—ie, failure to report to the press and governments, the US Congress can send lethal aid to these criminals and you don’t know enough to protest. Many of you just assume the Russians are “aggressive” when in fact their people have been dying at the hands of an evil regime and are not allowed to fight back with all their resources lest they be accused of aggression (defending themselves) in the Western kangaroo court of public opinion.

This research was hard going for me because I badly needed updating on this situation and it took me most of the afternoon to get a reasonable grasp of it.

Judging by how hard it was for me to understand, I can sympathize with those who are still struggling with the issue. But it is hard to sympathize with those who have unquestioningly drunk the Kool-Aid dispensed by the US Congress and our deplorable biased media and have sat by and allowed their tax dollars to go toward murdering innocents without protesting vigorously to their Congress person.

I have posted sitreps from our friend Irina Burya for many months now (novorossia.vision/en) and many of you are aware of the gruesome shelling of civilians, the invasion and takeover of swaths of territory declared as neutral by Minsk, etc. You know that the US is guilty as sin of sending lethal aid to a bunch of Nazi sympathizers.

I am still shocked that so many Americans are ignoring this issue that the US Congress can find it politically possible to finance these Nazi sympathizers with your money. This would never happen if everyone did their homework. As a rule of thumb, the US has been killing good and innocent civilians for the last 60 yrs or so (on behalf of the Russophobic Saudi dictatorship) and Americans have snoozed thru it. NOW is the time to WAKE UP and tell your Congress critter to stop voting for this or you will stop voting for him, her or it! And for God’s sake, please forward this message.

But if there are any who haven’t quite grasped this yet, this article should help:

You may recall that Petro Poroshenko had tried really hard to derail Trump’s campaign. Like his Italian counterpart Matteo Renzi, he put all his eggs in the Hillary basked and is now fighting for his (doomed) career.

But recently, the Congress, sensing Trump’s aversion to Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who tried to derail his campaign, gave Trump a gift in the form of a healthy cut to the aid package it had intended to send to Kiev to kill hapless citizens there. Why do Americans not protest this lethal aid to paid killers? I will never understand it.

Meanwhile, sizing up the situation in the US, Putin decided to recognize official docs, eg, passports issued in Novorossia, thereby raising the status of these people closer to an internationally recognized independent region or nation.

Around this time, perhaps smelling blood in the water, the E. Ukraine pro-Russian republics of Lugansk and Donetsk decided to pull a fast one on Kiev – which had been shelling civilians in their territory for years and had been promised lethal aid by the US mafia known as Congress — and call their bluff. It seems Kiev had blockaded roads and railroads into and out of the Lugansk and Donbass People’s Republics in an effort to bring these runaways to heel. But instead the pro-Russians outsmarted these ninnies, an easy enough feat. They issued an ultimatum and said that if the Kiev government did not lift the blockade by a certain date, they would seize the major businesses and industries in their territory (they called it “external management” but it was a seizure, ie, nationalization of the industries). Now it seems these industries were vital to pay taxes, feed Western Ukraine and make Ukaine’s filthy-rich filthy-richer. You’d think a regime with normal intelligence would take this seriously and sit down to bargain with the rebels. But the entire world is still living in the past, when any regime anywhere, no matter how corrupt, could snap its fingers and get US aid for anti-Russian actions. And Ukraine rivals Haiti in corruption. But not this time, Kiev. Not only does the EU not want any parts of you, but the US is getting fed up with your sniveling, whining Poroshenko.

The ultimatum deadline came and went and the Lugansk and Donbass leaders [President Igor Plotnitsky in Lugansk, Prime Minister Aleksander Zakharchenko in Donbass] kept their word. They seized the factories and immediately offered items like coal and other energy to Russia and others, in order to keep bread on the table. Now Western Ukraine gets to starve, just as it wanted E. Ukraine to starve – tit for tat. NOW, however, the Kiev government is faced with a humanitarian crisis of the kind it imposed on the rebels. What went around came around. McCain and Soros were fighting like mad to achieve that lethal aid to kill civilians in Donbass and Lugansk. But they, as well as their partner in crime, Petro Petroshenko, are left with a well-deserved punishment of their own making.

Redneck pickup trucks used to travel thru my old rural neighborhood with bumper stickers emblazoned with the words: Payback is a b—tch.

The long-awaited meeting between Petro Poroshenko and Donald Trump, expected to take place late last month, never materialized. Instead, the leaders ended up holding telephone talks, details of which remained undisclosed. Ukrainian observers are concerned that Trump’s cold shoulder indicates that Washington’s patronage for Kiev is coming to an end.

The introduction in the LDPR of external control of former facilities of the Ukrainian oligarchs can pose a serious threat to the regime in Kiev if the Republics are able to demonstrate a higher economic growth than Ukraine, believes Vasily Volga, the leader of the «Union of Left Forces» and the former deputy of the Verkhovnaya Rada.

If this experiment fits into the system of international payments and budget forming enterprises of the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and LPR [Lugansk People’s Republic] begin to work for the budgets of the Republics with a population of no more than 3 million people, their budget will double the budget of Kiev where almost 4 million people live.

It may happen that these two small unrecognized republics, which are now experiencing enormous difficulties in the social sphere, will turn into something that can be compared to Catalonia in Spain. The DPR and LPR can become the leaders in GDP per capita. This will allow the authorities of these republics to maintain a level of social security, that Ukraine has never dreamed of.

Yesterday, there was a real panic in Kiev. The Cabinet window were lit all night. There is one meeting after another there, and no one knows what to do about all this. It turns out that in the case of a real blockade, Ukraine is unable to survive not only without Russia, but even without Donetsk and Lugansk.

God forbid, there will be interruptions in the single energy complex. We have very high risks operating NPPs [nuclear power plants – Don]. In addition, last year the DPR and LPR paid 34 billion USD, if I’m not mistaken, to the Ukrainian budget. The loss of such a sum is an enormous loss for Ukraine, especially now that we have almost lost the right to the international credit. Moreover, we are still burdened with the court decision on payment of the so-called Yanukovich debt.

We are now witnessing interesting things. States do not die immediately – bang, they collapse – they die gradually. Of course, in historical retrospect, this occurs instantly. A few years for the state is a moment for man. But death within several years is what we are observing now.

I have recently had an opportunity to travel in Ukraine – the collapse of the transport infrastructure is reaching a peak. The majority of Ukrainian roads are not just worn out, they simply do not exist. The same thing is happening in the energy sector. Scheduled maintenance has not been conducted for three years, and such scheduled preventive maintenance is required on a quarterly basis.

Of course, we will live somehow. People lived somehow in the primitive communal system; they survived by gathering, dug up and ate roots. But our problem is that we live in an area saturated with high-tech facilities. If they are not maintained, if the state does not have the funds for it and the energy sector does not have enough power, we may end up not with gathering, but with rolling man-made disasters which will follow rolling blackouts.

In Ukraine, they talk about the stabilization, but it is a stabilization when, say, they have reached the bottom and, all of a sudden, there is a knock from beneath – I mean the LDPR [Lugansk-Donetsk People’s Republics] blockade.

The Republics of Donbass, whose documents had been recognized by Russia the day before, go on the offensive.

Today, the LDPR authorities have put forward an ultimatum to official Kiev: if by Wednesday, March 1st, the blockade undertaken by the Ukrainian radicals is not stopped, Lugansk and Donetsk will nationalize all enterprises under the Ukrainian jurisdiction and redirect them to the cooperation with the Russian Federation.

This is announced in a joint statement by Igor Plotnitsky and Alexander Zakharchenko.

‘Using the radicals, Kiev has organized and is continuing the blockade of railways, and threatening to block the road communication between the Republics of Donbass and Ukraine. This directly contradicts the spirit and letter of the Minsk Agreements and, in principle, characterizes the current authorities of Ukraine as unable to take care of the citizens. Many enterprises have been forced to stop their work as a result of the criminal actions of the Kiev authorities.

We have to declare that if by 00:00 on Wednesday (March 1st, 2017), the blockade is not lifted, we will introduce external management at all enterprises under the Ukrainian jurisdiction, working in the DPR and LPR. We will stop supplying coal to Ukraine. There is neither the capacity nor the payment scheme for the coal supply. We will re-construct all the production processes and direct them to the market of Russia and other countries. This was one of our first program promises at the time of the proclamation of our Republics,’ the document says.

Anti-Russia propaganda is thick enough to cut with a knife and has been raging for years. The people who write and promulgate it must be almost as brain-dead as the fools who buy into it because it is almost always easy enough for a third grader to see through and debunk. Recently a friend sent me an outdated report about the poisoning death of Aleksander Litvinenko and asked my opinion.

You will recall that a British inquiry was carried out last year by a high court judge to prove that Putin is a thug who needs to be ousted via a Soros-led coup. Er, I mean to determine who may have been behind the poisoning death of Aleksander Litvinenko in London’s Millennium Hotel in 2006.

Russia Insider debunked the “Putin done it” story supported factlessly by that inquiry, pointing out that Litvinvenko was in the employ of Russian mafioso Boris Berezovsky (wanted by Interpol at one time) and had no doubt been involved in the smuggling of radioactive isotopes. The author claims various venues that had been used or frequented by Litvinenko had traces of polonium. Thus, the author concludes he “probably” accidentally poisoned himself.

Surely no one will ever know for certain.

But did you know that Litvinenko was an Islamist and a Chechen who sympathized with Chechen terrorists, even blaming the Russian government for terror that these terrorists perpetrated? He had worked in Chechnya as a counter-intel agent with the KGB (see links below). It is not clear where his sympathy for terrorists came from but he may have been recruited into Islam by the terrorists he was supposed to recruit for the Russian cause in Chechnya. Thus, he was supposed to be a counter-intel agent but was in fact a counter-counter intel agent. Thus he was hardly a loyal employee and later turned on his employer. Further, note that the terrorists he was working with in Chechnya were radical Wahhabists, of the Saudi type who make up ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, for example. Almost everything he said to the press and the British intelligence agency was therefore highly questionable, and yet his unproven statements to the British authorities were dutifully and solemnly treated in the media as holy writ. Only a deceitful media and a brainwashed readership would trust this man and not take the British “court’s” (it was not a bona fide court of law) verdict with a grain of salt.

For example, although he stated on his deathbed that Putin was behind his murder, there is no way he could have known that because his ties with the Kremlin had been cut off for about 6 years when he made the accusation. Further, a good Wahhabist would naturally lie, even while dying, to make the anti-Wahhabi Russians look bad. To be sure, he did not act out of selfish motives. He acted out of a misguided religious fervor.

The fact that Litvinenko was a Chechen Muslim is a matter of public knowledge. Here is what the Telegraph reported, for example:

Afterwards he said: “I want to thank all my son’s brothers in faith that they prayed for him [Litvinenko] and remember him.” The family come from the North Caucasus, near the war-torn region of Chechnya, where Muslim rebels are fighting Russian forces.

Did Litvinenko choose to migrate to the West because he knew the deep state here was sympathetic to Islamic radicals? I mean, look at how Muslim criminals are coddled in Europe, where the press is muzzled by an unwritten rule never to juxtapose the words “Muslim” and “criminal.” Look how GW Bush’s Iraq invasion caused the Assyrian Christians to flee for their lives. Look at how the “rebels” in Syria – supported by US arms and funds – mistreated Christians. (as reported by mainstream news sources like USA Today, Daily Mail, BBC and numerous others).

Further, Litvinenko had said that the Beslan school siege that killed hundreds of victims was a false flag and had FSB involvement. The public is supposed to believe – as aided and abetted by the msm – that since Litvinenko had been an agent of Russian intelligence, he would have had insider information on this and can therefore be trusted. There is only one catch: Litvinenko was arrested in 1999 for “exceeding the authority of his position” and fled to London in 2000. However, the Breslan school attack occurred in 2004, 5 years later, when Litvinvenko was no longer an insider and could not have provided insider information! It was pure speculation, but was taken at face value by a willingly gullible press and by a deplorably gullible public whose knowledge of Russia and the Russians comes mostly from Sylvester Stallone movies.

Ever since the Age of Enlightenment, the central idea of the elites has been to destroy Christianity. Therefore, they take the word of an Islamist with ties to the mob while impugning a Christian leader without a shred of evidence. Between Putin and Litvinenko, one is/was a thug. Suffice to say it is not Putin.

Featured below is my translation of an article on the site of Movimento 5 Stelle (m5s), an increasingly popular anti-Establishment party which, if it comes to power in the vacuum created by Prime Minister Renzi’s resignation, is likely to take Italy out of the euro. Unlike the UK, whose leaders tenaciously still cling to the EU following the Brexit, Italy’s exit from the euro could be more brusque and throw the EU into a tailspin. Of the major anti-elite parties in the EU core countries, m5s is the boldest, most astute and most brutally honest in its critical analysis of western military and foreign policy. The article below should be book-marked for reference because it lists casualty estimates for the “good” war in Mosul and the “bad” war in Aleppo and shows that the numbers of civilians killed in US-waged wars and the Israeli conflicts with Palestine are extremely high, making Western criticism of Russia and the Syrian government look hypocritical. The article does not list the casualties in Aleppo simply because we hear or read about these every day thanks to the media dutiful reporting them in a tone clearly condemnatory of Russia (and Assad), as if only Russian wars entailed collateral damage. This article sets the record straight, highlighting the rank hypocrisy of the US and allies.

I took the trouble to investigate independently the casualty statistics listed by Fulvio Scaglione in his article below. Here are links to 3 months of UN figures cited:

Not all of the deaths can be attributed directly to US intervention. However, ISIS and its opponents killed a very large number of people as a result of the Obama administration’s refusal to prevent ISIS from entering the towns and cities. He did, however, provide arms to “moderate” terrorists in Syria.

While many conservatives take a dim view of the UN, this organization is the only one providing data of t his kind. Without the UN, the world would be reliant mostly on biased data from outlets loyal to the US government that caused much of the suffering.

Sadly, from my personal association with prominent and less prominent Brexit activists I have seen that only a minority of them understand that declaring their independence from the EU is only half the battle. They seem unaware that the real enemies are the US and NATO, which constantly beat the war drums against Russia and Assad, despite their own illegal and failed invasions in the Middle East, Ukraine and Kosovo, which leave the world infinitely less safe than before their interventions.

I receive alerts from the main anti-EU parties and after reading their literature, for years in some cases, I would rank them as follows in terms of their grasp of the geopolitical reality, particularly regarding US-waged wars. From most aware to least aware, they are:

Movimento 5 Stelle (m5s) (founded by Beppe Grillo. they will field a candidate for prime minister)

Front National (founded by Marine LePen, who is eyeing a run for president of France)

Partij voor de Vrijhijd /Freedom Party (founded by Geert Wilders, who is eying a run for prime minister of Holland)

I am not including UKIP (UK Independent Party) in this list because Brits are split on their feelings toward the Atlanticist Establishment; while UKIP was instrumental in bringing about the exit of the UK from the EU, they were only one of several influential groups in that endeavor. I would put Nigel Farage personally high on the list, because he is in line with Donald Trump – willing to deal with, rather than demonize, the Russians and Syrians. He has in fact traveled to the US to endorse Trump. However, the Brexit groups are divided with regard to remaining in NATO. Some think NATO is necessary for “defence,” despite the fact that all of NATO’s actions in recent years have been offensive and have violated international law regarding sovereignty of states. I also am not including the AfD because there is, at this point, virtually no chance that Germany will exit the EU any time soon.

The battle of Aleppo, with the bloodshed of recent days and the terrible years that preceded them, marked among other things the collapse of the Western information system , which is almost indistinguishable from partisan propaganda at this point. Everything in the Western narrative about Aleppo smacks of fraud and deceit. Since the publication of unfiltered and unverified data provided by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, founded and headed by an adversary of Bashar al-Assad and maintained by the British government, the word “siege” has been applied liberally for Aleppo but only in recent months, and never in the over three years that the city was attacked from three sides by rebels and jihadis, who came to occupy 60 percent of the urban territory.

But in a way, these are small details. The real issue is the refusal to confront a reality which can be summarized as: what happened in Aleppo in recent weeks is not at all exceptional. On the contrary, it is the norm of contemporary war. Don’t believe us? Then let’s have a look around. Take Mosul, the largest Iraqi city, which has been occupied by ISIS for two and a half years.

In mid-October the offensive to free it from the jihadists got underway (finally). Great fanfare, triumphant tones, exultation for civilians who “were being freed” from areas previously under the control of militants (while civilians in Aleppo who come from the neighborhoods dominated by al-Nusra Front, are not liberated but rather “escape”). Now, two months later, everything has come to a standstill and no one is talking about liberating Mosul. Not only that, the offensive by Americans, Kurds and Iraqis has been halted to such an extent that ISIS has removed 4-5 thousand fighters from the Iraqi front and sent them to retake Palmyra in Syria. Why?

The answer is very simple. The two and a half years of grueling bombing campaign gave ISIS plenty of time to organize the defenses in the city. The roads were mined or boarded up or replaced by galleries known only to the militia fighters. Some buildings were demolished to clear lines of fire; elsewhere walls were built to block the lines of fire and passage of the attackers. Finally, thousands of civilians were trapped to be used as human shields.

To be “liberated” Mosul will have to become another Aleppo: the bombings, civilian casualties, children torn apart by the strikes, and so on. There is an alternative, namely, house to house combat with hundreds and hundreds of dead Iraqis and Kurds — which has already been going on, even if military operations are almost at a standstill.

The UN Mission for assistance to Iraq (UNAMI), directed by Jan Kubis, former Foreign Minister of Slovakia (2006-2009), has made available mind-boggling data on the number of Iraqi deaths, civilian and other, of the last few months. In September, ie before the offensive on Mosul, the number of Iraqi civilians killed was 609 (951 injured); the number rose to 1,120 (with 1,005 injured) in October and to 926 (930 injured) in November.

As for the military and other combatants, the figures are: 394 killed (208 injured) in September, 672 killed (353 injured) in October, 1959 killed (and 450 injured) in November. Result? Everything blocked, meaning further suffering for imprisoned civilians in Mosul and more time for ISIS to continue building up.

Of course, nouveaux philosophes [a group similar to the Neocons in the US—Don Hank] and other clowns can harp on atrocities and human rights violations in Aleppo. But they are nothing but hypocrites. In 2004, the US Army fought two battles to “liberate” the Iraqi city of Fallujah, in fact occupied by the militants of al-Qaeda, the forerunners of the militants of al-Nusra, which play such an important role in the battle of Aleppo.

According to the independent NGO Iraq Body Count, between 572 and 616 civilians died in the first battle (April 2004); between 581 and 670 died in the second (November 2004) battle. The Americans used phosphorus arms and apparently depleted uranium. Have you ever heard of any new philosophers rending their garments over this? Do you recall Corriere de Sera [an establishment newspaper–Don] ever mentioning “slaughterhouse” in headlines about Fallujah, as it did referring to Aleppo?

And what about Gaza? According to the most conservative data, which are those published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, only 45 percent of the 2,100 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 war were real civilians and non-combatants. That’s still 945 unarmed people killed in two months of clashes.

Thus it was the very countries that now cry foul over the Aleppo operations, that block motions censure Israel at the UN. And isn’t Gaza a perfect copy of the eastern districts of Aleppo, attacked with bombs by the Russians and by Assad’s Syrians?

And yet UNICEF has informed us that in the first six months of 2016, Afghanistan had a record number of civilian casualties: 1,601 dead and 3,565 wounded. The worst half-year since the anti-Taliban invasion in 2001. According to UN estimates, 60 percent of Afghan civilians are vulnerable to attack by the Taliban and other insurgent groups and criminals.

But 40 percent of 1,601 deaths is still 640 deaths, or 640 innocent Afghans killed in six months (more than 3 per day) by troops arriving from our countries, that is, by those who are supposed to be protecting and “liberating” them. But everyone is silent; these dead do not deserve the indignation reserved for the dead of eastern Aleppo.

Thus the war of our times is utterly disgusting. Those who pretend to believe that in Chechnya and Aleppo different things were done than elsewhere, for example in Fallujah or Gaza, are quite simply lying. All of today’s wars are fought on the backs of civilians. All of them.

And in all wars, the armed men, with or without uniforms, are, at the most, collateral victims. Politicians, military people and terrorists know this quite well. So the real issue is to avoid wars as much as possible, not to pretend that there are good wars and bad wars.

I wonder if you will recall that the GW Bush wars were started by rah rah talk, as when Dubbya stood at ground zero and, with his arms draped around two NY firemen, proclaimed “the people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear from us.”

So ask yourself: Did “the people who knocked down these buildings” really hear from us? Now every American who experienced that moment lived through the wars that followed. But remember that the “people who knocked down these buildings” were mostly Saudis because it was they who founded and funded – together with the US Deep State – Al-Qaeda. But instead of declaring war on the Saudis, our real enemy, we attacked the enemies of our enemy, the Taliban (which had around that time plotted to oust the Saudi royals) and Saddam, who ran a secular type government with little or no emphasis on Shariah and even had a Christian in his cabinet. The Saudis hate secular leaders and the US helps them eliminate them. (Here is a clue as to why we are so obliging to them: http://laiglesforum.com/how-the-petrodollar-perpetuates-islamic-terror-2/3315.htm).

Thus, absurdly, Dubbya was aiding and abetting the “people who knocked down these buildings” and killed up to 3000 Americans. And he and his Neocon pals had to know that the Christians and other large groups would leave Iraq in droves if we “won,” and that chaos would ensue, forcing the US to occupy.

And how about that Afghanistan? What a great victory! Rah rah. Not. US and allied troops are still there and the carnage is heart-wrenching – for all but the arms industry and its financiers.

Thus we can state with confidence that, facing the TV cameras at ground zero that day, George W. Bush was thumbing his nose at a bleeding America. (This fits in perfectly with Bush’s cover-up of the Saudi role in 9-11 as reported subsequently by the Washington Post ).

Now with that deception in mind, you will note the unbridled euphoria over the Trump election. Rah rah. Millions of Americans were relieved that we would now have peace.

And in fact, we might.

But we might not either.

Yes, Donald Trump had promised he would cooperate with Russia. The prospect of peace that this signaled is one important reason many Democrats crossed over to vote for him, for example.

But what many of us have forgotten is the eerily similar rah rah moments of the Bush years and what rah rah moments usually mean in our great country. The greatness often lies solely in the rah rah, not in the situation on the ground, in the aftermath, our bleeding hearts and pocket books.

Some exceptionally alert observers are already pointing out that Trump has picked two rank Neocons for his cabinet, who have both warned about “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, despite the fact that it was the US and Europe who started and supported the bloody coup in Kiev for the obvious purpose of goading Russia into a defensive action that could be spun by our media into “aggression.”

Trump’s presumptive defense secretary has warned that the Russian “aggression” in Ukraine is “worse than we think.” This is a lie, as you know if you follow the web site that provides regular sitreps on the conflict in E. Ukraine. Bookmark this site and go there at least once a week. If enough Americans did, our “leaders” would not dare arm the Kiev fascists. Even, if you followed the OSCE’s regular Ukraine reports, you would also know the aggressor is Kiev’s troops (many of which are fascists, eg, the Azov Battalion) that the US government supports.

But Mattis is not the only one beating the war drums against the country Trump promised to “cooperate with.” Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick for CIA director, recently returned from a trip to Kiev, and after fruitful discussions with the Neo-Nazis there, says that “Putin’s aim is to take over Ukraine” (Mike would have fit in nicely in a Clinton cabinet) , implying that Russia wants to attack Ukraine militarily. If that were true, Putin would have done the job a long time ago before NATO had deployed troops all over Eastern Europe, including 30,000 at the Russian borders (reminding Russians of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa that destroyed much of Russia and killed millions of Russians). No one is saying that a Ukraine thoroughly disgruntled with US and EU lies, like the false promise to let the country join the EU, might not voluntarily ally itself with Russia. It would be hard to paint that as Russian aggression, but recent anti-Russian (hence racist) drivel from the Western msm shows that no lie is too big for the warmongering elites to manage.

The latest E. Ukraine (Novorossia is the real name) sitrep shows that the Neo-Fascist sympathizers the US government supports in Kiev are now recruiting Lumpenproletariat, common thugs, with promises of free land, stolen from Russian speakers.

Now we are at another crossroads, another rah rah moment in American history. The euphoria over the Trump victory is great. Many are willing to go along with anything this leader wants. Like Bush, the Evangelicals have anointed him as God’s servant. The chessboard is arrayed exactly as before.

The question is: will you forget the lessons that Dubbya taught us and say to yourself: this time is different and the rah rah heralds a better world? Or will you recognize the rah rah moment for what it is: a time for you to say “not this time!”?

Postscript:

Writing for a news and opinion site is an endless job, as it should and must be. Since this was written, Trump is reportedly eyeing shifty arch-Neocon Mitt Romney for the position of Secretary of State.

So what’s wrong with that you ask? Here is a video featuring Mitt saying “Russia is our worst geopolitical foe” who always “lines up with the world’s worst actors”, among whom he counts Assad, the most pro-Christian leader in the Middle East, who is fighting for his country’s life against Al-Qaeda and ISIS, groups that are armed and trained by our “ally” Saudi Arabia.

Trump has said he will cooperate with the same Putin that Romney has spent much of his career smearing.

RAGA President Dr. W. George Krasnov had written a letter to President Obama (here) encouraging him to earn the peace prize he had won at the beginning of his presidential career, based on a few Norwegians’ expectations rather than on concrete good deeds by Obama. Dr. Krasnov’s letter urged Obama to try and re-establish a dialogue with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Obama’s response (here) was just anti-Russian boilerplate of the kind that has nauseated thinking Americans for years. Dr. Krasnov has given laiglesforum.com permission to repost this letter, which can be found at the site of RAGA, Russian & American Goodwill Association (home page here), an organization which has worked thanklessly for decades to facilitate relations between our two countries. Thanks to the recent unprecedented Russophobia in the Western msm and political sphere, based principally on lies, conjecture and distortions of Russia in the Putin era, RAGA’s work has never been as important as it is today. I take this opportunity to remind the reader that Russophobia, since it is hatred and fear of an entire ethnic group, is in fact racism, and racism is not a Western value. We need to constantly boldly remind our lawmakers and msm of this unspoken fact.

Thanks for responding to the concerns with the growing tensions in US-Russia relations that I expressed in a short email letter allowed to US citizens by the White House. Both my letter and your response are in English and Russian on the site of Russia & America Goodwill Association of which I am the founder and president.

Frankly, I am very disappointed by your response. I gave you a chance to defend your Nobel Peace Prize as justly deserved. I also gave you the opportunity to lay the foundation for peace policy for your successor. Instead, you chose to attack Russia and her president Vladimir Putin as if I were their apologist.

You are my president, and you owe me an explanation. The intent of my letter was not to argue about Russia, Putin or Bashar Assad. I am sure they can defend themselves. My hope was that you would engage them diplomatically, via a peaceful dialog, to avoid any chance that the current shooting hostilities, be it in Syria, Iraq or Ukraine, do not degenerate into an armed confrontation with Russia and thus put the world at risk of nuclear conflagration.

Your letter lacks the introspection, self-analysis and humility that are necessary for a sound foreign policy. After all, we live in a world in which the United Nations and its Security Council still have a role to play, a role that you and your Republican predecessor try to usurp on behalf of the USA.

Let me remind you that The Charter of the United Nations proclaims that in pursuit of peace THIS Organization is “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.” In my letter, I reminded you about Edmund Burke’s profound philosophical underpinnings for the concept of sovereignty of different forms of government, including those we may disapprove of on ethical grounds. I hoped you would return to the time-honored concept of Westphalian sovereignty that ended the bloody period of religious wars in Europe in 1648. Instead, you assert the policy of world domination in which the United States decides which government is allowed to exist and which is not. Thus, the US finds itself in a wasp nest from which we are unable to extricate ourselves.

I believe you are fundamentally a decent man who wanted to steer the US on the road to peace and justice, domestically and overseas. Not only did I vote for you, but I also published an article, “Obama’s Perestroika Challenge: US & Russia”, to encourage you to do what you promised.[1] Even though “The New York Times” described your election in 2008 as “a catharsis and return to the American dream that was destroyed–politically, economically and socially–under Bush,” I pointed out that at the very start you made the wrong appointments that “bear little signs of new thinking. They… lack a vision of the evolving global community and the role the United States and the West should play in it.”

The bad omen was the scandal with Hillary Clinton, your Secretary of State, when she presented her Russian counterpart with a gift-wrapped red button, which said “Reset” in English and “Peregruzka” in Russian. Alas, the latter means overcharge, or overload. The incorrect translation implied hostility, not peacemaking.[2]While Clinton’s Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov kept his diplomatic cool, she quipped: “We won’t let you do that to us, I promise.” She kept her promise, and US policy toward Russia has been indeed overcharged.

As a former USDS contract interpreter, I am pained to know that US top leaders do not take relations with Russia seriously, even on a linguistic level. Since the early 1990s we have ignored the voices of such wise, experienced and diverse politicians such as George Kennan, who devised the successful containment strategy but berated the expansion of NATO; Jack Matlock, former ambassador to Moscow, who warned against US meddling in Ukraine, Chas Freeman who likes Putin’s approach to the Middle East[3], Steve Cohen, a long-time champion of better relations with Russia, and Henry Kissinger of the realist school of diplomacy.

I suspect that as soon as you entered the White House, you were surrounded by a group of ideologues espousing the so-called neo-conservative ideology with which they had already infiltrated US intellectual establishment, academia, the Big Media, all branches of government, both Republicans and Democrats. In fact, they are neither “conservative”, nor “neo”, for their main inspiration is Leon Trotsky, the proponent of permanent revolution. Jonas Alexis of the dissident Veterans Today sees the Neo-Cons (that should be the proper name) as “the reincarnation to some extent of both Leninism and Bolshevism”. Mr. Alexis does not spell out to what extent. However, Francis Fukuyama, a former Neo-Con, remembers that the leading Neo-Con Irving Kristol boasted he was “a member in good standing of the [Trotskyist] Young People’s Socialist League (Fourth International).”[4]

Be that as it may, the Neo-Cons are not a mere replay of history. They do not proclaim, “Proletarians of the World unite!” On the contrary, they favor the neoliberal economics and globalization under the hegemony of the United States. The slogan that suits them best is “Oligarchs of the World unite!” Truly, the USA has replaced the USSR as the chief protagonist of a global ideology, albeit it is no longer class struggle and proletarian revolution for global socialism but rather a series of color revolutions aimed at establishing world capitalism. That is why the reset policy you promised failed to take off.[5] That is why you became the champion of the endless wars.

Sometimes, one remembers the Old Cold War with nostalgia, for there was then more professionalism among US diplomats. I was fortunate to review a remarkable book “Stepping out of Line: Collected (Nonconformist) Essays on Russian-American Relations, 2008-2012”. It is by Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, my colleague and RAGA author who helped resuscitate the American Committee for East-West Accord. If then, says Doctorow, the West was guided by George Kennan’s containment strategy, now “the legacy of Realpolitik has been… marginalized by the resurgent forces of Neoconservatism in Washington”. As a former Soviet dissident, I admit it was heart-warming to read a book devoted to the American dissidents now dissenting from the Washington Pravda line.

If you go online, you will find a multitude of American dissidents opposed to the monopoly of Big Media, and the number is growing. Do I have to explain to you, Mr. President, who the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) are? This is what they wrote to you on October 2, 2016:

We write to alert you, as we did President George W. Bush, six weeks before the attack on Iraq that the consequences of limiting your circle of advisers to a small, relatively inexperienced coterie with a dubious record for wisdom can prove disastrous. Our concern this time regards Syria…The door to further negotiations remains ajar. In recent days, officials of the Russian foreign and defense ministries, as well as President Putin’s spokesman, have carefully avoided shutting that door, and we find it a good sign that Secretary Kerry has been on the phone with Foreign Minister Lavrov. And the Russians have emphasized Moscow’s continued willingness to honor previous agreements on Syria.[6]

One of the fifteen signees of the memorandum is Ray McGovern, a former CIA career officer who used to brief President Reagan on Soviet affairs. I first learned about him when he was severely beaten by the security detail for wearing on his back a protest sign during Hillary Clinton’s speech at the GWU. Veterans for Peace, an organization to which I belong, demanded an apology. Doubting that the media would report the brutal manhandling, I posted the news on Veterans Today.[7]

Another signee was Col. (Ret.) Ann Wright, one of RAGA’s authors, whom I heard speaking at a peace rally in Washington. I was proud to place the VIPS memorandum next to my email letter to you inside RAGA Newsletter Antidote 30.

I have been issuing these ANTIDOTES since your government opted for reckless meddling in the internal conflict in Ukraine in February 2014. If the old Realpolitik school diplomats never called for a war against the USSR nor tried to provoke it by stepping into Soviet sphere of influence, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State made herself famous when she dismissed the EU role in Ukraine, kicked Yats (Yatsenyuk) upstairs, and put Klitch (Klitchko) in his place, all in unprintable language.[8] While accusing Russia of meddling she boasted that the US spent $5 billion to foment anti-Russian hatred in Ukraine.

I believe your world vision lacks introspection and is devoid of curiosity about how the USA might be seen from outside. After the end of the Cold War against the Soviet bloc in late 1990s, millions of people around the world were hoping for the “peace dividend” that would benefit economic development and social services of all countries concerned. Instead, the US retained NATO and embarked on its expansion. As I already addressed this issue, please read my article The Folly of the New Cold War.[9]

On October 25, 2016, I received a letter from a fellow graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle. I have not seen him since 1973 when I defended my PhD dissertation there. “I think you have hit a great many nails squarely on the head”, he writes about my article. “It’s so very, very hard to find writing these days that makes any attempt to look at Russian policies from other than a crudely Russophobic point of view, depicting the country as some sort of beast or sinister eminence afoot in the world”. A specialist on ancient China, my friend was ready to swallow all that tripe. “These last several months I’ve found myself writing frequently to the editors of the Guardian Weekly (which I subscribe to) scolding them for a steady raft of editorials and commentaries that seem to me very much in this vein. No attempt to present a multi-sided analysis of circumstances involving Russia”.

Another RAGA reader’s comment was brief but to the point: “America’s biggest threat is neither China nor Russia, but rather an ignorant, gullible populace. There is a remedy to this: learn to think independently regardless of the cost”.

I am sure, Mr. President, you too have to deal with the avalanche of information, which needs to be checked for veracity. Alas, you get only the opinions tainted by Neo-Con ideologues. This applies to all information you receive on Russia, Syria, and Ukraine. As Ambassador Jack Matlock wrote about Ukraine, the first and most important spin put on the situation was to portray it “as a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, not among culturally, ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse people in Ukraine”. [10]He is convinced that “Ukraine cannot normally exist in isolation from Russia” and that sending western weapons there “would be madness” that “would hurt primarily Ukrainians.”

You are surely familiar with Ambassador Chas Freeman’s outstanding career and varied expertise. It was your Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Admiral Dennis C. Blair, who named Freeman as chair of the National Intelligence Council, which compiles intelligence from sixteen U.S. agencies into National Intelligence Estimates. It was very unfortunate that the pro-Israeli lobby blocked Freeman’s appointment. As you may have noticed, any person critical of Zionism and Israel is automatically smeared “anti-Semitic.” This practice not only puts in jeopardy academic freedom but it also obscures our vision of the Middle East and the world at large. It may have started with the campaign of vilification against Professors John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt, the authors of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” but such accusations are even more ominous when made against Freeman who is a Jew.

Freeman’s recent talk “U.S. Policy and the Geopolitical Dynamics of the Middle East”[11] contains a number of suggestions, which cannot be ignored in any formulation of a sound US policy in the Middle East.

Freeman explains the key reason for the failure of US policy in the Middle East: “Wars don’t end until the militarily humiliated accept the political consequences of their defeat. Saddam gave lip service to UNSCR 687 but took it no more seriously than Netanyahu and his predecessors have taken the various Security Council resolutions that direct Israel to permit Palestinians to return to the homes from which it drove them or to withdraw from the Palestinian lands it has seized and settled. Like Israel’s wars with the Arabs, America’s war with Iraq went into remission but never ended. In due course, it resumed”. Freeman’s advice is just as sound: “The United States needs to get into the habit of developing and implementing war termination strategies.”

The most scathing criticism Freeman aimed at the Israeli policy which the US is not only unwilling to challenge but tries to placate and emulate. “Israel’s lack of concern about the consequences of its occupation and settlement of the West Bank and its siege of Gaza has facilitated its progressive abandonment of the universalist Jewish values that inspired Zionism and its consequent separation from the Jewish communities outside its elastic borders. U.S. subsidies underwrite blatant tyranny by Jewish settlers over the Muslim and Christian Arabs they have dispossessed. This is a formula for the moral and political self-delegitimization of the State of Israel, not its long-term survival. It is also a recipe for the ultimate loss by Israel of irreplaceable American political, military, and other support”.
Concludes Freeman: “The United States needs to wean Israel off its welfare dependency and end the unconditional commitments that enable self-destructive behavior on the part of the Jewish state”.

And yet, Mr. President, you found it expedient to reward Israel with the gift of $38 billion dollars’ worth of military equipment for the duration of the ten long years of one, two, perhaps, three presidents whom you deprived of diplomatic freedom.

You seems to be oblivious that it was not Netanyahu, but Putin who got you off the hook[12] when US hawks were about to push you into a bombing attack on Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons. As to your principal peace-making achievement, the Iranian nuclear non-proliferation deal, it was again done with Russia’s assistance while your friend Netanyahu did everything to abort the agreement even by meddling in US domestic affairs.

Remarkably, the man who should have been compiling national intelligence estimates, Ambassador Freeman, finds Russia’s policy in the Middle East sounder than either American or Israeli. According to him, “Moscow sought to reduce the complexities of Syria to a binary choice between life under the secular dictatorship of the Assad regime and rule by Islamist fanatics…Russia succeeded in forcing the United States into a diplomatically credible peace process in which regime removal is no longer a given and Russia and Iran are recognized as essential participants…The campaign reduced and partially contained the growing Islamist threat to Russian domestic tranquility, while affirming Russia’s importance as a partner in combating terrorism”.

Your failure to live up to the promises you’ve made is highlighted by May 15, 2016, report: “Mr. Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and spent his years in the White House trying to fulfill the promises he made as an antiwar candidate, would have a longer tour of duty as a wartime president than Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon or his hero Abraham Lincoln”, or any or any other American president.[13]

It is not a good record, for any president, much less, for the one awarded the Nobel Peace Prize largely on credit, not for actual accomplishments. Forget about score keeping among presidents. We are talking about thousands of American soldiers killed, tens of thousands maimed, wounded, disabled, committing suicides, their families shattered. The count of “enemy” combatants and collateral civilian deaths is even more devastating for the people of the Middle East. The Europeans are forced into accepting millions of displaced persons, including terrorists. Because of US meddling, the Middle East is being de-Christianized, de-secularized, and split into multitude of fanatical sects in search of a foothold while infrastructure for development has crumbled.

US meddling in Ukraine has been no more successful, bringing no benefits for the Ukrainians, nor improving US strategic posture in Europe.

It all started with US meddling in Russia in the early 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin. Until then the USA and Americans were very popular in post-Soviet Russia. I know this because I was visiting then Russia numerous times. However, the heavy-handed US meddling on the side of “pro-Western” neoliberal Russian reformers left a very bitter taste in the mouth of millions of Russians. When the US government tried to blackmail Russia by pressing the IMF to deny her loans, I protested. In March 1999, in the name of RAGA, I mailed an Open Letter on the Russian Crisis to President Bill Clinton demanding to stop meddling in Russian affairs. More than a hundred American experts on Russia signed the letter.[14]

In a cover letter to President Bill Clinton I wrote that “The very survival of Russia as a distinct civilization and a major contributor to the cultural ‘biodiversity’ of the planet is at stake. Anyone who has studied Russian history knows that Russians will survive. And they will remember how they were treated by the West”.[15] Clinton replied in a diplomatically evasive way, but asked me to stay engaged. I have.

In 2012, I voted not so much FOR you as AGAINST Mitt Romney, because he participated in the plunder of Russia and undermining the health of young Russians. Do you not believe me? Then read what two American journalists wrote about Romney’s, and other Americans’ role in Russian reforms: “It was part of a free-for-all that involved wholesale looting of major industries, as Western technocrats helped facilitate the transfer of Russia’s wealth into the hands of a few oligarchs. That set in motion a populist backlash that helped sweep Vladimir Putin into power, giving the Kremlin dominance over a country Romney has lately called our ‘number one geopolitical enemy.’”[16]

There were early alarm signals from US diplomats as well. Writes E. Wayne Merry, Chief Political Analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow from 1990-1994: “we created a virtual open shop for thievery at a national level and for capital flight in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars, and the raping of natural resources and industries on a scale which I doubt has ever taken place in human history.”

As to the claim that the U.S. has the mission to promote democracy throughout the world, Merry tells otherwise: “I think the election of December 1993 was a clear and legitimate expression of Russian popular will and a rejection of the economic policies that Washington and the Treasury Department and the IMF had pushed on Russia. And when faced with popular rejection, the choice was to ignore popular will and to press on with the policy, and I think there was a huge cost on the long-term development of rule of law and constitutional government in Russia for making that choice.” [17]

I also recommend Janine Wedel’s excellent book Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe. An anthropologist, Wedel argues that the collision between two groups of people, Russian reformers and their American advisers, whose cultural patterns and mentality were too different, was inevitable. Instead of meaningful open cooperation, the collision degenerated into collusion between the least conscientious on both sides. Contrary to US rules that require competitive bidding, says Wedel, the now defunct Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) got the exclusive contract for reforms in Russia because the rules were suspended “for foreign policy considerations”. By the way, Ukraine too suffered from US meddling then. Janine’s book won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

Dealing with Russia, one must always keep in mind that in the 20th century it endured 73 years of totalitarian rule, including the suppression and humiliation of all religions, especially Christianity. Many Americans know about that through the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn whose refuge in Vermont proved to be a blessing not only for Russia but also for the United States. The corporate media likes to portray Putin as former KGB officer in East Germany who regards the collapse of the USSR as a tragedy and feels a nostalgia for Soviet times. What they leave out is that Putin was a witness to the tragedy of the Russian people in the 1990s, the scope of which can hardly be understood by Americans unless they have lived through the Great Depression. It is not for nothing that Putin has befriended Solzhenitsyn and his widow Natalya and regularly shows up at a Russian church. Most importantly, upon assuming the presidency, Putin’s first item on the agenda was to restore Russia’s SOVEREIGNTY. That is why his popular support is so strong.

As it happens, this year I celebrate two anniversaries. One is the 40 years since I became US citizen in Dallas, Texas, in October of 1976. The other is the 50th anniversary since I set foot on American soil in 1966 when I was invited as a fellow of Slavic Area Studies at the University of Chicago. Coming to America ended my career in Sweden to which I defected in October 1962. I am and always will be grateful to the United States for giving me – along with hundreds of other Soviet dissidents and defectors – a refuge, hospitality, security, opportunity for education, and freedom for research, teaching and writing.

Alas, the changes in this country during in the post-Cold war years were not always for the better. Tom Pauken, a Dallas lawyer and friend of mine, who later became a member of President Reagan’s administration, secured my US citizenship in 1976. In his 2010 book, Bringing America Home, Tom bemoans, “What became of an American culture that once was guided by the principles of Christianity?” “Bringing America Home not only explains how we lost our way,” says its jacket, “but shows how our founding principles can help us find our way back”. I agree that America desperately needs to find her way.

I also agree with the thrust of Ambassador Jack Matlock’s book “Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray–And How to Return to Reality.” Matlock is right that “during the Clinton and particularly the Bush-Cheney administrations, the belief that the United States had defeated the Soviet Union led to a conviction that it did not need allies, international organizations, or diplomacy, but could dominate and change the world by using its military power unilaterally”. Both Pauken’s and Matlock’s books were published under your watch, Mr. President. You should have taken a cue, but you did not. Such inattention doomed you to follow in Bush’s and Clinton’s footstep.

A former student of mine at the Monterey Institute of International Studies just sent me a link to Margaret Kimberley’s November 6, 2016, article titled “Russophobia: War Party Propaganda”.[18] It is right on target: “The corporate media, led by newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, are front and center in pushing tales of Russian villainy. Human Rights Watch and other organizations who care nothing about abuses committed by the United States and its allies are also playing their usual role of choosing the next regime change victim.”

The current tensions with Russia are so severe as to threaten the survival of Planet Earth. Therefore, I take it as my civic duty to give you my recommendations as to how you could salvage the hope that made the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to you possible. You might use the remaining days in the office by setting up a peace-loving agenda that your successor could not refuse:

First, no POTUS can act wisely unless there is access to reliable information. You have denied yourself such access when you, for instance, failed to fight for Chas Freeman as chair of the National Intelligence Council. Make sure that the next administration is not spoon-fed by the Neo-Cons and their allies in the academic establishment and the corporate media. It is them whom my friend Israel Shamir calls the Masters of Discource.

Start the legislative process for breaking up the corporate media conglomerates and, at least, make the current anti-monopoly laws stick in pursuit of the violators. Brother Nathanael Kapner, a New York Jew who converted to Russian Christianity, goes as far as to propose nationalization of the media.[19] In the very least, a national debate on media abuses is in order.

As the most powerful nation in the world, the USA should work jointly with other powerful nations such as Russia, China, India, and the EU—always under the auspices of the UN—as honest brokers aiming for a compromise between the warring parties.

This especially applies to the conflict in Ukraine. The US should encourage the Ukrainian government to try to resolve its inter-ethnic conflict between Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians in the same civilized and patient Western way as is done between Flemish and Wallons in Belgium, Catalans and Basques in Spain, Scots, Welsh and Irish in the UK, Quebec in Canada, etc.. Let Switzerland serve as a model to emulate. After all, the Ukrainians and Russians are considerably closer to each other linguistically and culturally than the conflicting groups in any of the above countries. Ukraine’s prospective integration with the EU should not lead to severing economic, cultural, and political ties with Russia.

The Middle East cannot be healed until a peace agreement is reached between Israel and Palestine (both on the West Bank and in Gaza). Both the the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations) and the Arab Peace Initiative should be revived ASAP and put to work. You said it yourself on June 9, 2009: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. It is time for these settlements to stop.” Before your term expires, make sure that your successor immediately carries out what you were prevented from doing.

We should admit to ourselves that ISIL (Daesh) would not have emerged without Iraq’s destruction by US bombardment, invasion and occupation. Likewise, the Western attack of Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya created a lot more problems than it solved. Therefore, tell your successor that the regime change strategy belongs to the past.

The US should undertake the initiative of either eliminating or limiting and regulating the use of drones for killing suspected terrorist not only for human rights considerations but also because “collateral” damage from such attacks produces an endless string of suicide avengers. Calling for an international forum, under the aegis of the United Nations, is the first order of things.

Stop supplying weapons to regions and countries where there is civil strife threatening to escalate to civil and international war;

I just met a fellow Veteran for Peace member, Captain (Ret.) Ron Fisher. Learning that I have been in correspondence with you, he asked me to send you his greetings, as well as a series of proposals to secure a peaceful, prosperous, and just life on Planet Earth. You can find it at http://www.wethepeoplenow.org/plan_sdg.htm. Ron is a Naval Academy graduate who served on four nuclear submarines including as Executive Officer of both a nuclear attack and a ballistic missile submarine. He also was trained in the use of both tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. He made nine ballistic missile submarine patrols and six special operations on nuclear attack submarines. His awards include the Legion of Merit, two Navy Commendation Medals, the Navy Achievement Medal, the Navy Expeditionary Medal and the Vietnam Service Medal.

Last, but not the least, I would like to ask you, Mr. President, for something that you can do single-handedly. Please use, before the end of your term, your presidential prerogatives and pardon Edward Snowden. Let him return to the United States, a country that he loves and that has already benefitted[20] from his perhaps illegal deed, committed, I believe, in quest for higher conscience for humankind. I had to wait almost twenty-nine years before the Soviet authorities decided to “rehabilitate” me, for lack of corpus delict, in not returning from Sweden. Every government that fails to integrate dissent as an essential ingredient of public welfare runs the risk of defections and death by brain drain.[21]

As I conclude this letter, I cannot help looking for wise men to guide both of us as they indeed have guided my RAGA project.

“Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.” — George Washington

“True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.”— George Washington

“I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.”—Abraham Lincoln

“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together”. — Edmund Burke
So help us God!

S. On February 11, 2012, I mailed you a letter I had written on behalf of some people of my native town of Perm. In spite of the unfortunate incident at the airport,[22] I know many Permians were delighted by your visit there as part of your job as Senator. A photograph was enclosed. I never got an acknowledgement, but I want you to know that my invitation to you and Michelle to visit Perm still stands.

The new Russian anti-terror law is being used by the Neocon media to stoke fear and hatred of Russia, and many observers are now saying that this is a propaganda effort intended to create a war atmosphere. Since we can ill afford a war with a major nuclear power, I have decided to post this as a bit of an antidote.

Our heartfelt thanks to Stephen Beet for writing and distributing the article posted below. As stated in his article, it is not Christian denominations that are targeted by the new Russian anti-propaganda law. Although the Russian Duma cannot say so, it is mostly aimed at preventing Muslim terror. In order to keep the very large Muslim population happy, however, it is written so as to appear impartial and hence includes Christian activity as well. It is also aimed in part at sects that are claiming falsely to be Christian when a closer look shows they differ from Christianity in obvious ways.

And before you open the below link, a caveat: every major Western religion has child and woman abuse stories swirling around it. Read with an open mind. However, the Mormon church seems to imitate the Catholic church in that, in some cases, clerics have not been much encouraged to report child sex and other abuse. Again, cases like this could possibly found in all major denominations. However, I chose the following link because if contains a large compilation of abuses:

If you are a Mormon, I hope you will not take offense. This information is focused on the church itself, not the followers.

At any rate, I think most readers will understand that the new Russian law only targets abuses, and Stephen’s brief report should make it understandable why Russian lawmakers were concerned about protecting Russian children and others.

Another sect that Russians are generally skeptical of is Jehovah’s Witnessses. As a reader of Koine Greek, I have seen an example of a serious flaw in the JW translation of the New Testament. I have read the entire New Testament in the original Greek (or what has been identified as the original Greek, taken from early manuscripts) and will be glad to share my linguistic analysis this with anyone interested. But more important in this context is the way JW teachings indirectly encourage their followers to commit suicide. I personally knew a JW father of 4 who committed suicide. Shortly thereafter his children, who had been well behaved until then, wound up in foster homes and had brushes with the law. I had no idea until later that JW doctrine leads to high suicide rates.

Finally, Stephen is a British Christian, NOT Russian Orthodox, and obviously, he does not feel in any way threatened by this new law, which has been the object of the usual Neocon Russophobic propaganda that pervades Western msm and also politics (eg, Hillary campaign’s silly claim that Russia hacked her emails).

and can assure you this law is not as represented in the Western press. It is so vague as to be very difficult to enforce and can be expected to be enforced and interpreted in the courts so as to prevent terror, not to stop Christians from sharing their faith.

Don Hank

Just published by the Church of England Newspaper, Don. Stephen

By Stephen R Beet

A number of anti-terrorism measures passed by the Russian Duma on June 24th and signed by the President have been widely criticized and deliberately misrepresented in the Western Press. In fact, if one reads the legislation and examines the background, this law has no substantial affect at all on freedom of worship and is entirely positive.

Alexey Komov, an official of the Russian Orthodox Church puts the legislation into context:

“New regulation of missionary activities is just a minor part within the set of the new amendments to various [anti-terrorist] laws. It says that foreign missionaries need to receive a permission/registration to do their work, and that they should preach only at their mosque/church/etc. But this applies only to the official representatives of a religious organization. All normal people can freely express/preach/promote their religious and other beliefs with no limitations (which is a Constitutional right), and the law does not forbid that.

The law (?????: “? ??????????????? ????????????? ????????????”, ???????? ???????? ??????????????? ??????? ?? ????? ???? ???????? ???????????????…) states that all traditional beliefs are valid and sacred and can be preached. But those who abuse the sacred texts of any religion will be restrained.”

I have lived and worked in Novosibirsk for over ten years and know the background to this proposed legislation, which is aimed not at bona fide Evangelical Christians going about their lawful business, but at dangerous and persistent groups who are operating in Russia with the aim of the aggressive proselytizing of young people and the destruction of the official Russian Orthodox Church.

I have witnessed the methods of these people and can confirm reports of their gaining the trust of ordinary Russians before luring them into their sects. Many of these groups are financed from the US – especially those professing the beliefs of the Mormons, who are not Christians and who believe (to quote their official website): “Additional books of scripture – including the Book of Mormon – strengthen and reinforce God’s teachings through additional witnesses. These groups work mainly by targeting young children in ways that would not be tolerated in the UK. In fact, if they went about their business in like manner in the UK, they would be arrested.

I have noted the tactics of these ‘missionaries’, mainly young men who operate in small groups. They are sent to Russia (on student visas) with the specific purpose of evangelizing young people, and work under the cover of teaching English in small private language schools, of which there are very many, thus gaining access to children and young people. After they have gained their trust they begin to teach their message subtly and invite children to meetings and parties where they can meet other young people and discuss religious issues. In Novosibirsk they operate on the main metro line in pairs. Being highly trained in the Russian language, they easily get into conversation with unaccompanied young people and give out leaflets which, on the surface, seem innocuous, mainly invitations to “discussion groups”. Sometimes they openly advertise a church meeting. I lifted one of these leaflets and can confirm that it was from the Mormon organisation.
In the Summer these young men easily get work in children’s language camps where they can have longer and unsupervised access to children and ample opportunity to impart their message. Some years ago I witnessed such a group who had hired a classy motor launch and were spending the Summer touring the banks of the River Ob, offering to give puppet shows to the many children living in organised camps. I attended one of these shows and the whole proceedings were a blatant and highly talented attempt to proselytizing from the Orthodox Church, which these people mistakenly believe is synonymous with Rome. At the end they gave out expensive ‘Bibles’ in Russian. The whole operation must have cost a fortune! Other cults are operating in Russia and there have been several reports of children taking their own lives after becoming involved.

This is the background to the new legislation which is designed to limit and perhaps ban the activity of these non-Christian sects and to protect unsuspecting persons. If bona fide Evangelical Christians are also engaging in these underhand ways of ‘evangelizing’, it would seem fair to say that they deserve to have their activities similarly limited.